


Needing is One Thing (Getting is Another)

by SkipandDi (ladyflowdi)



Series: Moments from the Infiltrate Universe [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, M/M, Mystery, Pre-Slash, Wild Deviation from Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:36:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4829375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/SkipandDi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has never been one to believe in coincidences – he’s far too much a pragmatist for that – but for that one second as Sherlock raises John’s gun level with the vest that had been strapped to his person not even two minutes before, he can’t seem to get over the fact that <i>he’s been in this situation before.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Needing is One Thing (Getting is Another)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the prequel to Infiltrate. This is the first story Skip and I wrote together, so it was an experiment in _learning_ to write together, and finally realizing that hey, this is the funnest thing that ever did fun and we're not half-bad at it. And so the Infiltrate series was born, and the rest is history. :)

Moriarty throws them into a game of cat and mouse that culminates in a proper Wild West showdown in a darkened swimming pool.

John has never been one to believe in coincidences – he’s far too much a pragmatist for that – but for that one second as Sherlock raises John’s gun level with the vest that had been strapped to his person not even two minutes before, he can’t seem to get over the fact that _he’s been in this situation before._

And he thinks, then, of the circumstances that led him to this very moment – putting ink to paper and signing his life to the army, barracks living, training as a doctor in the field, and the emergency exercises his superiors had known he needed and which, at the time, he’d found an utter waste of time. 

In that moment, heart beating fiercely against his ribs, John is more tired than he’s ever been, exhausted by the very act of living, while simultaneously more alive than he can ever remember being. 

Sherlock is so very young, at times, even though only a few years separate them in age. For all his knowledge and all his insight he’s achingly naïve when it comes to the simple business of staying alive. Or perhaps more correctly, Sherlock doesn’t care one whit if he blows them all up in the process of getting rid of Moriarty – would consider it a job well done – but John’s not quite done living. 

The last time it was a landmine, a man barely out of his teens and fifteen soldiers shouting for him to stay on it, _stay on it don’t move your leg don’t move your foot don’t fucking MOVE._ John can still hear himself screaming it in his head, the commander throwing himself at the boy so hard he’d broken the boy’s ribs and arm and shoulder, but he’d saved his life, _saved_ it when John had thought all was lost. 

He doesn’t feel terror like that this time, only a deep, centering calmness. Time slows down until he can barely hear Sherlock over the roar of his own blood, or see anything other than the blinking green of the vest Moriarty had strapped him in and which Sherlock had just as violently ripped off of him. 

Sherlock smiles. “Checkmate,” he says as he pulls the trigger, and later John won’t remember tackling Sherlock around the knees, and he won’t remember getting swallowed by the water, and he won’t remember Sherlock hanging on to him like lifeblood, eyes enormous and so green they fill his entire face. 

What John _will_ remember is the sudden realization that his therapist was wrong for ever suggesting that he put Afghanistan behind him, that Sherlock had been right all along, and that John is apparently more than willing to follow Sherlock down the rabbit hole, regardless of where it leads. 

. 

John thinks that Sherlock doesn't have any self-preservation instincts, that they went the way of his social skills and any sense of perspective. Sherlock doesn't necessarily disagree, though he would perhaps couch it in different terms. It's not a death wish – John himself covers that territory with frankly alarming regularity – but more a distracted and at times criminal negligence, a natural result of the distance from his mind to the mundane realities of everyday existence. 

They spend a minute and six seconds submerged in the pool, and Sherlock is forced to ignore the minor game of semantics so he can reevaluate his entire argument. John holds him down, stares at him, calm, _so strangely calm_ , like he knows what will happen next when that's patently impossible. 

_Tell me why you're like this_ , Sherlock thinks. _What do you know that I don't?_

Debris crashes into the water, a slab of ceiling slamming John in the back and neck, cracking his head into the wall. 

Sherlock spends the next two days turning John's hospital room into a base camp. The subsequent evidence prompts him to scrap his entire thesis, after a fashion. The nurses hate him, the doctors avoid him, the porters mouth off at him because they aren't paid enough to care. John would love it, if he were awake to witness the chaos. 

Sherlock stares at John, long hours in the night, wondering. He reviews Moriarty at the pool, barely-suppressed mania and unbridled inhumanity; his own actions, damning them all to the consequences; John instinctively saving both their lives. 

Sherlock has never come quite so close to death before. Even while he dragged John across cracked cement and shards of plexiglass in the back of his mind he was grateful for the additional data. 

John would die for almost anyone. Sherlock, pressing hard on John's chest, trying to force out dirty pool water, realized he couldn't say with certainty whether there had been anyone at all for whom he would willingly do the same. He was capable of things no one else could do, was unique even unto the principle of individuality. His continued existence above others made sense. His interests in survival had extended at least that far. 

Then John sputtered, and vomited, for all intents still unconscious. Sherlock manhandles John’s body, puts John’s head across his lap and attempts to accept that now, at least, there was. 

. 

This is what John becomes aware of first – the mechanical beep of machinery, worn, washed cotton against skin that feels papery and thin, something tight around his legs. He is tipped at an angle, just enough that it throws his entire sense of balance off. His shoulder twinges uncomfortably, a memory of an ache, but he doesn’t smell desert, the dirty-comforting tang of uniforms worn too long, the antiseptic they used by the barrel. He breathes and there is London rain, and acid-sharp disinfectant, lemon, that was used in city hospitals. 

He isn’t in Afghanistan, and his shoulder is nothing more than a rippled and ugly scar, but the circulation socks are familiar, as is the turtle-slow movement of the mattress beneath him inflating and deflating, even the beeping by his ear. What is less familiar is the person sitting beside him, chin down and face hidden by a shaggy head of dark curls, arms crossed over an almost too-thin chest. John stares, _Harry_ , but no, that isn’t quite right, his sister has blond hair, wavy and messy and much shorter. Those curls are distinctive, hardly the norm, and he wants to reach out but the IV nips sharply at his hand, reminds him of its presence. 

As if he’d spoken the man looks up, eyes a startlingly cat-green. A dozen emotions cross his face in a flash, too many to process. He doesn’t move, but his eyes travel over John’s body before settling, piercingly, on his face. “Awake, then.” 

John breathes in, lets it out slowly. “Sherlock.” 

His friend doesn’t move, but John can see the way his fingers tighten in his shirt, where they’re crossed over his chest. He thinks Sherlock would be embarrassed if he knew John could see the very visual sign of his tension, so all he says is, “What happened?” 

“What do you remember?” 

“Not what I asked.” 

“You’ll find that is neither here nor there,” Sherlock says, and leans his elbows on John’s bed, steeples his fingers. “What do you _remember?_ ” 

“You. Shouting at bad telly.” He thinks a moment. “Writing a blog entry. I can’t recall what it is I was writing. I was thinking about going round to Sarah’s, see if she wanted to go out for dinner.” 

He thinks perhaps Sherlock is in a bad way indeed, because he can’t quite seem to control his expression, though like before John has absolutely no idea what it is he’s thinking. “I suppose that’s for the best then.” 

“What _happened?_ ” John asks, but even as he asks it he feels a wave of tiredness sweep over him. He can barely keep his eyes open, and that’s when he realizes a nurse is standing at his other side, smiling kindly, syringe still in hand. He missed her under the white bandage he’s sure is wrapped, mummy-like, around his head. The pain he hadn’t even realized he was feeling recedes, and he mumbles, “ _Sherlock_.” 

“Quiet,” Sherlock says in kind, leans back in his chair, and John gets the distinct impression that if Sherlock weren’t so… _Sherlock_ he’d say, _I’ll be here when you wake up_. John thinks it’s a lucky thing that he _is_ Sherlock, and doesn’t have time for any of that rubbish, as it saves them both the embarrassment. 

At least, right up until Sherlock casually laces their fingers together, tight and sure and somewhat terrifying, because Sherlock had told him he was married to his work, hadn’t he? And there’s Sarah to think about, and his job, and what in the world he’s going to do when it doesn’t work out, because he rather likes the flat and Mrs. Hudson and _Sherlock,_ always, always Sherlock. 

“Sleep,” Sherlock says, and the IV aches in his hand, and Sherlock turns on the telly, and John falls asleep to the news, reporting on the evils of the world. 

. 

Sherlock is so bloody annoyed he has to go and harass Anderson until Lestrade physically shoves him out of the front door with orders not to come back until "The Doctor is himself again." He thinks about abandoning his patches and reaching for something stronger, picking at all these problems with his brain flying three times as fast as normal. He wants to go back to the hospital like that, full up to the point he's nearly twitching, just to watch their reactions. Deliberately walk by the security cameras so Mycroft can sit in his office and tut, get so distracted he misses his chance to start the next war. 

But John is already confused, and Sherlock is already late. 

The medication they have John taking isn’t working as well as it should. There are increasingly longer periods when John is forced into consciousness by the pressure in his skull. He never complains about it, but in general he seems to have some sort of personal investment in remaining as stoic as humanly possible. Sherlock occasionally wants to remind him that this isn't Afghanistan, that he's not about to die. John would probably find that out of character though, so he doesn't ever bother bringing it up. 

He does stride into the room right as John has finally managed to blink the world into order again. John pauses, like Sherlock just appeared out of thin air. "Do you wait in the hall timing your entrances?" he asks mildly. 

"It's a natural talent," Sherlock replies, dropping into his chair. John looks like only pain is keeping him from rolling his eyes. "What do you remember now?" Sherlock suddenly presses. 

"The same thing I remembered five hours ago: nothing," John replies, weary. "I wish you would just tell me." 

Sherlock finds he has to stand, starts stalking around the room, muttering more to himself than John. "No, no. Not yet. It would be useless." 

He knows John has a temper, and isn't particularly surprised when it rears its head, peering out behind bandages and inflamed skin. " _I have a right to know_." 

Sherlock waves a dismissive hand in his direction. "You have a right to your recovery first. Did you know that apparently Anderson has the gall to--" 

“Sherlock," John interrupts. He's rarely felt the need to be the center of attention (of course not, he's smart enough to know his skills don't generally warrant it) but he knows how to attract it when he needs to. Sherlock can't look away. “I have. A right. To know." 

Sherlock actually has no idea what look crosses his face but it's unusual enough to make John look surprised. Sherlock snatches up a cup full of ice water and without warning chucks the contents at John's face. The results are instantaneous. 

John flinches from the water, and the ice, and then he _flinches_ , deep, like all the pain his body is in has just reached his brain in one massive implosion. He doesn't try to wipe the water off and instead foolishly tries to climb out of the bed, setting all the monitors off and causing the most ridiculous ruckus. Sherlock's already moved to hold him down, keeping a steady, even pressure, repeating John's name until it finally sinks in. He's aware of the nurses in the background, ignores them all, watching John's eyes dart around and finally settle on his own. " _Sherlock,_ " he gasps. 

“Just breathe," Sherlock replies, and holds on. 

. 

It’s a while before he can breathe properly again. 

There are a lot of voices – women yelling, his somewhat competent doctor speaking furiously, and beneath them the noise of Sherlock’s gaze, loud and grating and sharp, like his violin in the evening quiet of their flat. He’s looking at John as if he holds all the answers, but John’s not _like_ Sherlock; he doesn’t even know which questions he should be asking. All he can think about is the clanging in his head, the cold settling into his hospital gown and dripping into his ears. 

He’s shivering, but he doesn’t think it’s the water. 

They shove Sherlock out of the way, escort him right out the door, and the moment is broken. John wishes that the person moaning would stop so he can hear what Sherlock is shouting. 

When it comes to him, it’s less of a surprise than he thought. It’s later, later, after the sun has finally gone down and his bed has been changed and he’s blessedly warm. He’s drifting, sleepy under the medication, and he thinks about what Sherlock had said, about what John himself had said. The last thing he recalls with any sort of clarity is sitting in the flat typing at his laptop, the sound of the floor heater as it tried to kick on. 

The realization, when it hits him, startles him as sharply as the glass of water to the face. 

Sherlock comes back the next day. He isn’t sheepish – Sherlock does _not_ do sheepish – and he certainly doesn’t apologize. Neither does John, when he says, “You just want to know how he did it.” 

“I always want to know how people do what they do, but I’m afraid in this instance you’re going to have to be more specific,” Sherlock says, though he knows, he _knows._

“You don’t want me to remember for my sake. You want me to remember so I’ll tell you how Moriarty snatched me, just like he snatched all those other people.” John’s not as good as Sherlock about reading faces but even he can see the traces of annoyance, written like invisible ink over Sherlock’s expression. He wonders at that, at the emotions Sherlock is doing an ill job of concealing, if it’s another of Sherlock’s ploys to get John to remember. 

“Of course,” Sherlock says. 

It hurts, more than John expects. “You’re a right pillock, you know that?” 

“They never found a body.” 

“What?” 

“Moriarty. Moriarty’s body. Lestrade and his laughable team of dancing monkeys have been at the swimming pool for the last two days – they can’t find a trace of him.” 

John thinks on that, considers the implications. Wonders at how he became okay with being such a distant second to someone he holds in such high esteem, then decides he’s not offended. Sherlock is who he is, in all his fucked-up glory. “You think he survived. That he’s going to kidnap again.” 

“What I think is irrelevant,” Sherlock says. “I simply need you to remember.” 

“I can’t give you what you’re looking for,” John replies, but sits up a bit, settles himself upright. After a moment of staring at each other, he says, “Well? Tell me about the crime scene, then.” 

. 

Sherlock talks for quite literally an hour about the crime scene and what it all means, with occasional digressions into how the underdeveloped minds of the entire forensics team seem only barely capable of sustaining the bodies' automatic functions, which is a shame and yet renders their every breath a miracle of science. John tries his best to follow, though there's a fifteen minute period towards the end where he drifts off before startling back at one of Sherlock's more enthusiastic comments. Sherlock's not offended; the man does have a rather serious head injury. 

"Sherlock..." John rubs his eyes with the hand not trapped beneath a needle and too much tape, sounding like he's finally given up the ghost. "It's... it's like you're talking about something I wasn't there for. There's just - nothing." He shrugs incrementally with his good shoulder, as though it's not really important. 

Someone with less patience would have started yelling; Sherlock just narrows his eyes. John's expression makes it clear he knows it means the same thing. Sherlock's words are measured, each one neatly defined. He shouldn't be holding himself so carefully, it's only going to make the later explosion worse, but he can't seem to respond any other way. "John, I cannot solve this without more data." 

"I don't have it," John says, his tone similarly annoyed. 

"You haven't really trie-" 

"What the hell else do you think I do in here?" John interjects, throwing all his lagging energy behind the words. Sherlock gives up the argument as a lost cause, which is ridiculous. Not even Mycroft can make him cave as often as John does, usually _without actively trying._ John rubs at his eyes again, this time like he's in pain. Since there’s nothing else he can do Sherlock just pages the nurse. 

John glances at Sherlock's hand then back up, pale and drained. Even his eyes seem empty, all the blue sapped out, and what's left behind is something almost crystalline. "How did you even get back in here, anyway? I thought the words 'Banned for Life' meant you had to wait at least a day." 

Sherlock should lean back but he doesn't. Does John remember the first day he was here at all? Does he remember the things Sherlock did then? He's tired of conversations around John's memory, tired and bored. Instead of replying with a real answer he favors John with a slightly disappointed look that says _you should know better._ "Those kinds of threats rarely work on me." He snags John's IV-free hand again, just because, just to see what John does. 

John smiles a little, and doesn't pull away. His look says _I do._ "So you phoned Mycroft then. That was nice of him." Sherlock frowns automatically, and John's smile gets a little wider. 

His mobile phone rings, and Sherlock picks it up with his free hand and passes it over to John, who looks entirely put-upon. "Probably Harry again." He presses the on button and holds the phone up to his ear despite the IV, or the way the blood pressure cuff on his arm creaks at the movement. "Yes?" 

It takes Sherlock all of four seconds to realize this isn't Harry. 

_”Sooo, how’s it going?”_ someone says on the line, high and grating and somewhat effeminate. 

“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.” 

_"Oh, I don’t think so, John-Hamish-Watson,”_ the man says as John is about to hang up, and it sends a chill up John’s spine, alarm bells ringing in his head. _“Tell me, is Sherlock there? He’s got to be, he’d never be far from his pet doctor.”_

He is, fingers clamped so tightly on John’s his joints are creaking, but he doesn’t try to take the phone. Doesn’t so much as move a muscle. 

“Who _is_ this?” 

_“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten our evening tryst! Moonlight, candles, a hypodermic to the neck. Ever so romantic,”_ the voice sing-songs, and John smells the peonies that grow by the door at Baker Street, the chip shop’s evening pull. Sees the pavement moving towards his face with a sickening lurch, and feels bright, stinging pain. 

He thinks about the morning before, when his nurse had tutted at him for the small, infected puncture wound on his neck. 

John says, with utmost care, “I’m going to put a bullet in your brain.” 

That startles a laugh out of the man, and he goes on for some time, enough for John to see red, fury bright and hot and boiling like fire through his every muscle. _“Oh John, John, John. What have I done to offend you so?”_

“You killed the old woman. You kidnapped a child!” John snarls down the line, and he can't seem to stop tugging on Sherlock's hand. "Like it's some sort of bloody _game!_ " 

_"Of course it's a game,"_ the voice says, matter of fact, and John wants to reach through the phone and wrap his fingers tightly around Moriarty's throat. _"Now put Sherlock on the phone, there's a lad."_

. 

John holds the phone out to Sherlock, the line on his IV taut. The grip they’re maintaining wouldn't be out of place if one of them were hanging off a cliff. 

Sherlock takes the phone; he hangs it up. 

It rings again almost instantly, surprising no one. Sherlock stares at it, weighing the potential for information against the anathema of being manipulated. He can hear John breathing, the overly-controlled manner, like he’s next to a bomb, like he’s strapped to one all over again. Sherlock answers. 

_"So rude!"_ Moriarty announces, sounding perversely pleased. _"Your puppy had much better manners, Sherlock."_

"What do you want?" Sherlock bites out. He's fighting the impulse to just hang up again, damn the consequences; he's no longer willing to play by Moriarty's rules, much less be quite literally at his beck and call. 

_"Just to check in on my favorite playmate, dearest. Things were so exciting for a moment, don't you think?"_ John's eyes are searching Sherlock's own, mining for things Sherlock doesn't know he's capable of providing. 

"You haven't scared me off," he assures Moriarty, who laughs delightedly. 

_"Good! I would hate to see things end so quickly. But remember, darling – you need to stay out of my way for now. Even someone as special as you has to come second to daddy's day job."_

"Do you really expect me to sit by and watch as you commit treason?" John looks furious on Sherlock's behalf, which is a sentiment of so wholly unknown a quality that Sherlock finds he has absolutely no idea what to do with it. 

And because Moriarty has made Sherlock his own obsession he knows exactly where to follow him, and just how far to go. _"You know Sherlock, your poor, wounded puppy is looking a little tired. Think the medication is wearing off? It's been long enough. Someone should probably come and give him a little relief."_ Before the last word is out of his mouth a nurse is walking in, syringe in hand, an unassuming expression on her face. 

"I'll find you," Sherlock replies, voice as low and menacing as he's ever pitched it. "And when I do, I'll make sure John is the one to put a bullet between your eyes." 

John blinks at him, the only expression deep surprise. The nurse – hired via third party, clearly in this to pay off her student debt and support her two young children, has no idea what she's signed up for – gasps in horror. Sherlock hangs up the phone. 

The nurse wavers between John and Sherlock, clearly unsure who she should be addressing. "It's time for your – his – next dose." 

Sherlock stands up, forcing himself to let go of John's hand, and stalks around the bed to loom over the woman. John tells him to stop but he doesn't, enjoys the petty victory over this pathetic woman, cannon fodder sent to punch through Sherlock's defenses. "What you're going to do," he tells her, "is drain that down the sink, then unhook him from everything." 

"Sherlock--!" John snaps. The nurse tries to muster up an argument -- "His condition's not stable enough," -- but Sherlock overrides them both. "Do it now or I incapacitate you, lock you in the bathroom and messily disconnect him myself." She swallows but does what he says, turning off machines and untangling wires. 

John watches, worried but unafraid, even now. "What's going on?" he asks and, _God_ , that he wants this, finally something Sherlock can give him. 

"You're still a hostage as long as he's got you lying here, damaged." He tosses John his own coat. "I'm breaking you out." 

. 

If John’s life were a film (which isn’t that far a stretch, considering the fantastic nature it’s taken recently) he’d have titled the two hours that followed Moriarty’s little phone call _Escape From St. Barts._ Some things just _didn’t happen_ in real life -- case in point, walking brisk and barefoot through a hospital with a coat that was wearing him rather than the other way around, with a man who had John’s service revolver tucked into the waistband of his trousers and absolutely no problem using it. 

Of that John doesn’t remember much, the pain in his head so pounding and bright he’d felt a bit like a man gone round the bend, staggering drunken and grateful for Sherlock’s arm cinched too tightly around his waist. He remembers a lot of voices shouting, and signing something, and wondering at the cold floor under his bare feet. He remembers the way the coat seemed to fill up the entire car, smelling of damp wool and something distinctly Sherlock, lovely and warm and hideously expensive against his skin. 

John says, “Was the police escort really necessary?” 

Sherlock doesn’t glance up from his phone, and John catches Lestrade’s eye in the rearview mirror for a brief moment. “Of course it was necessary, what part of ‘hostage’ do you not seem to understand? No, no, please, explain what you mean so I might expound on the danger you’re in.” 

“Sherlock.” 

“Oh, enough of you and your ‘Sherlock’, you sound like my mother.” 

_“Sherlock._ I haven’t any clothes on, and as we passed the turn for Baker Street ten minutes ago I’m assuming we’re not headed home.” 

“Of course we’re not ‘headed home’,” Sherlock says, in a tone that implies it’s a good thing John is reasonably attractive because nothing seems to be going on between his ears. 

“Oh well, thank you for all of that sterling information. I’ll just apologize for my near nudity wherever we stop, then.” 

Sherlock doesn’t even grace him with a look, and John feels not unlike he did when he was a boy and wanted attention. He doesn’t think jumping around and flailing his arms is becoming for a man looking at thirty five, but a small part of him doesn’t care. 

“What of the phone call?” Sherlock asks Lestrade. 

“We tried to get a trace, but he bounced it from several different towers all over the city – impossible to get a proper signal,” Lestrade says. “I’ve got Anderson and his team looking through the surveillance footage from the last two days, if what you said is true.” 

“What who said?” John asks. 

“Moriarty was there,” Sherlock says, dark and angry. He slams the phone down on his knee. “You don’t have to apologize.” 

Before John can ask just what he’s apologizing for he realizes they’ve stopped in front of the gate leading into fucking Downing Street and Mycroft is standing at the door to number 18, waiting for them. 

. 

There are too many things happening for Sherlock to take note of it all. Relevance has taken on innumerable -- occasionally contrary, often contradictory -- definitions for him in the past. Right now relevance has been whittled down to include two concepts: survival, and leverage. He needs the latter for the former, and this need is the only thing that convinces him to acquiesce to Mycroft's assistance. 

There are other moments he will have to dissect later, when relevance has once again become a bloated, distended mess that frustrates him even as he relies on it to function. The way he snarled at Lestrade for attempting to help John out of the car, somehow turning the words _don't touch him_ into a threat. Mycroft's expression, almost impressed even as it stayed unamused -- of course Mycroft could never just do one thing at a time, even in regards to his own emotions. The way John faked focus exceptionally well; his eyes were dilated from pain and he was probably staring at Sherlock through pinwheels of color, yet he kept trying, mentally lugging himself along. 

"You're a doctor," Sherlock reminds him. "You know what a bad idea this is." 

"Being at the mercy of Moriarty is probably worse." 

"Probably?" 

"I've never been trapped with two Holmes before." John smiles and Sherlock flashes his own, quick and painless. 

The elegance of the warm sitting room is not lost on John, who settles into the sofa with the sort of finality that suggests he plans on never moving again, and should he die he'd like to be buried with it. Sherlock eyes Mycroft, who is watching the two of them with a cat ate the canary expression that is going to get Sherlock yelling in about four minutes. 

"Thanks, Mycroft, for everything," John mumbles, dragging his eyes open through sheer force of will. Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Please, John. You really can't think they'd bestow all this on one injured veteran.” 

John purses his lips and quickly slides into a small, self-deprecating smile. "No, I suppose not." He's making the wrong inferences, which means he's either dumber than Sherlock gives him credit for or his short term memory is damaged and he's already forgotten the way Sherlock yelled on his mobile at Mycroft's assistant all the way to the car. 

"Just, sit," Sherlock orders, then stands up and walks out the door to argue with Mycroft in the hallway. 

"That was unduly harsh--" Mycroft starts, before Sherlock cuts him off. 

"Oh come off it, just get to the part where you admit Moriarty is upsetting your international agenda in some way. I'm not helping unless I know _everything_ you have on him." 

Mycroft looks at Sherlock like he's a charming but stupid pet, or a child to pat on the head and send off with a few biscuits and some milk. "I hadn't expected this, you know." 

Sherlock tries to cut through this line of conversation so they can get back to the more important topic. "I would have thought you'd be approving; you always said I was too isolated." 

"There are no half-measures with you, are there?" Mycroft inquires, almost to himself. Clearly that will give him more intelligent feedback than actually _asking_ Sherlock. 

"There are even odds on which of us Moriarty will contact next, but it _will_ be one of the two of us," Sherlock warns. "If you want our cooperation you're going to have to admit what you know." 

"Please, Sherlock. I know you're distracted but do try and think this through," Mycroft admonishes. "I need do nothing of the sort. What matters to you is whether I allow you to continue playing the game. Keeping you appraised on the life stories of the other players is unnecessary." 

Sherlock involuntarily looks back down the hall, to where John is no doubt only moments from sleep. "I can win this on my own." 

"You're not on your own," Mycroft announces, as though they weren't both already aware. 

Sherlock sets off down the hall, intent on asking John if any of this has finally sparked his memory. He stops at the entryway. 

John is gone. 

. 

This is what John realizes, quite suddenly and without ceremony: he's thrown himself in with the wrong lot. Or perhaps more correctly, Afghanistan has warped John beyond recognition and the people he's chosen to befriend reflect some battered part of his psyche. All he knows is that the therapist he fired weeks ago would have had a field day with this, a visual representation of all that is fundamentally _wrong_ with him. 

Whatever the reason, there's no getting around it. John's surrounded by psychopaths. 

"Sociopaths, actually," Sherlock says suddenly from behind him, and John doesn't jump, he _doesn't_ , only he kind of does. His voice doesn't even sound like his own when he says, "Did you know your brother collected guns?" 

"Of course I do, why do you think we’re here? At times my reasoning skills are the height of finesse. Sometimes, they're not." 

"I can see that." And he can. Mycroft's home looks a bit like a magazine spread, all fine linens and velvet curtains and Persian rugs. In fact, if one looked past all the guns mounted in what was surely a trophy room, of some sort one would think the home staged for Nigella bloody Lawson. "You never told me Mycroft was a hunter." 

"He isn't," Sherlock says, brusque, and takes hold of his elbow. "We're to have the second floor guest room, and are expected for breakfast come morning, eight a.m. sharp." 

The very thought of food makes John's stomach turn unpleasantly. "Sherlock, I don't have any clothes,” he reminds him, pertinent information. 

"I'm sure we'll find you something," Sherlock says darkly, and John doesn't understand but he's far too tired. Leaving the hospital, while a necessity, is looking like less and less of a good idea as the night goes on. 

At least he's got pajamas, that's something. He'd graduated from the air-conditioned gown the day before, thank Christ. He doesn't think he could have handled this adventure with his arse hanging out. "Your brother's got floors, then?" 

"Four. Never underestimate the depths of the government's pocket book," Sherlock replies, ushering him along. John would normally have something to say about being dragged everywhere like a bit of luggage, but he can't quite say no to the steadying wall of heat Sherlock has suddenly become. 

John's got tunnel vision, but he's sure the rooms are very nice, as tasteful as the bed is soft. He doesn't even know how he got to the bed, only that someone's lifting his legs up onto it and he's still got the coat on, warm and woolen and comforting. A blanket now, too, and Sherlock a moment later, stretching out long beside him. John hears himself say things, the first things that pop into his head, and feels Sherlock beside him, and tomorrow he won't be sure, but he could almost swear he could feel fingers in his hair, stroking softly. 

. 

Sherlock has to concede that there are only so many options open at this point. The thoughts align themselves as he stretches out beside John, who doesn't drift off to sleep so much as drop into it like a pile of rocks. He'd mumbled at Sherlock; incoherent things, random things, impossible things. Trying to tie them together, anticipating what was next -- it was a mindless way to pass the time, genially amusing even. 

He doesn't mean to fall asleep, though he does. Hadn't planned to be awake at five fifteen either, but he is. John snores softly beside him, seems to barely have moved in the intervening time. Sherlock stares at John, wrapped up in a coat that has devoured him and leaves only the top of his head, the edge of a bandage, the very tip of his up-turned nose. It's when he's with Mycroft that Sherlock notices how bizarre his life is, how easily novel and unique flips into strange and unpredictable. He knows what brings John to his side time and again; he has no idea what convinces him to stay. 

At five twenty-three he walks out of the room and down to the study on the main floor. At five thirty he makes a phone call. 

It only takes three rings. _"Clever, clever boy,"_ Moriarty answers, voice low -- a disturbing attempt at seductive. 

"We make a deal," Sherlock says. His tone makes it clear this is not a negotiation. "You and me. That's it. You get what you want, you get my _attention_. You don't make obvious attempts to bother my brother, you don't insult my intelligence. You leave John Watson alone." 

_"You think I'd give all that up just for your 'attention'?"_ Moriarty replies. 

"Yes," Sherlock announces, entirely devoid of inflection. 

_"You're right, I would."_ Moriarty giggles. The sound of it is infuriating; Sherlock wants to reach through the phone and squeeze his throat shut. _"I am going to miss messing with your puppy. You have no idea the fun we had together."_

It's unfortunate the line to John's former room has been tapped by now, but that's unavoidable. "I will let Mycroft take you down if you choose not to agree. He's not even remotely as relaxed as I am, you won't have anywhere near as much fun." 

Moriarty heaves a hugely put-upon sigh. _"Fine, fine. Though I don't know that I like you changing the rules."_ And here is the menace he had brought by the pool, the fury that Sherlock, even at his darkest, has yet to match. He doesn't know that he'd still be himself if he could. _"Don't think you're in control, Sherlock Holmes. I will win. I always win."_

Sherlock smiles. "Not anymore." He hangs up. 

At a quarter to six the building's security cameras record Sherlock leaving. He's in a dark blue shirt, black trousers, black shoes. No coat, despite the chill. What they don't see are the instructions on his bed, with John, who is still asleep. 

Sherlock makes new mistakes all the time. What he doesn't do is make the same ones twice. 

. 

Despite popular opinion, the Holmes brothers aren’t infallible. 

Those who describe their techniques as such operate under false assumptions. To claim their reasoning skills and powers of deduction are flawless would be the ultimate in delusion – to err was human, and the Holmes brothers, despite evidence to the contrary, are men of flesh and bone. Granted, Mycroft often wowed those around him as if he were performing parlor tricks, and Sherlock had the science of deduction down to an art form, but aside from their minds being cut from a cloth above the common plebian hive, their conclusions are perfectly sensible. 

They aren’t infallible. Their margin of error is just ludicrously tiny. 

Sherlock, as he has often said, doesn’t count technological malfunction in that margin -- phone, fax, internet, or that laughable room of monkeys Lestrade liked to call his tech department. Sometimes someone wrote numbers in the wrong order, misspelled an email address, misheard a name, because human beings are barely cognizant apes running about letting emotion get in the way of cold, hard facts. Sherlock doesn’t hold that against them, even when it makes his job harder. 

Mycroft, on the other hand, does count common errors in that margin. Seven years the elder, he likes to think of himself as a bit more seasoned than his impetuous younger brother, can see his own hand in the mistakes that play out around him. He counts common errors in his margin because he _knows better_. He counts common errors because they make him normal, and unlike his brother he revels in those small, glimpsing moments of humanity he has managed to retain despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Mycroft knows the moment his younger brother leaves his home; he can hardly believe Sherlock would think otherwise, really, but his brother often gets so caught up in his own cleverness that he forgets there is one other who matches him wit for wit. 

Or perhaps now two people. 

He understands the irresistible need to _know_ because he feels it too. He’s curious, can’t help but be, because Moriarty is the man his brother would never be, and yet could have easily become. Moriarty is what Sherlock might have turned into if Mycroft hadn’t saved him from their mother’s clutches, taken him in at nineteen and never looked back until his brother had insisted on the flat on Baker Street. 

Mycroft even understands something he’s sure his brother doesn’t, and that makes him unbearably sad. Mummy’s reach had always been a little too long, and she’d warped his ideas of love into something grotesque and heartbreaking. 

He hopes, for John Watson’s sake, that it isn’t so. 

He looks at his pocket watch, waits. 

In time – in fact, as soon as the sun crests over the edge of the windowsill -- he hears a muffled bang, a thump, a wild, terrified curse from upstairs. Very suddenly John is there in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing Sherlock’s coat, the coat Mycroft bought him all those years ago. John is so overcome with anger that the paper rattles in his hand, creases under the tension in his fingers – he looks wild, possessed, and Mycroft knows what Sherlock sees. 

”Your brother is a damned fool, and he’ll be lucky if I don’t shove my foot up his arse when I find him,” John seethes, voice thick with rage, and whatever doubts Mycroft might have still had about him fade like smoke. 

. 

Sherlock takes the roundabout way to his destination, changes cabs in four of his brother's most obvious blind spots just to be sure. When he finally arrives it's only just midday, a chilly spring sun breaking through the clouds. Inside he finds everything already in order -- a desk and a laptop, a mobile blinking at him with ominous intent. There are no creature comforts, no signs of life. 

He clicks the phone on to find a picture of a blindfolded young woman, blandly beautiful, tear tracks lining both her cheeks. The subject line says _Eight Hours._

He gets to work. 

Seven hours and forty-eight minutes later he's as close to frantic as he ever gets, eyes skipping over everything while his brain hurls down one dead end after another. 

Ten minutes later he's forced to call the only number already programmed in the mobile. "I need more time," he bites out. 

The silence manages to be both insulting and condemning. "It's hard to solve a crime with both hands tied behind your back," he throws out, though that must be readily evident. He can't go to the Yard, has to avoid Mycroft's near omniscient gaze. He doesn't do excuses, but he might as well have been asked to flap his arms and fly. 

The laptop flashes and suddenly the woman is on the screen, still tied up, still blindfolded. She whispers her last words brokenly in the direction of the camera. _"You... failed."_

. 

It's been ten hours. 

Mycroft gave him some clothing (terrifyingly his size, and what Mycroft was doing with men's clothing in John's size he doesn't want to know), and fed him, and calmed him when Lestrade and his team showed up and proceeded to be even more useless than usual, and John decides he has not appreciated being treated like someone's pet dog, far too close to what Moriarty, that bastard, had said. 

Ten hours. It's been ten hours, and Sherlock is gone, gone, gone like he never existed. CCTV can't track him, not a single bloody hair on his head, and Mycroft's called in every single favor he's accrued in his _life,_ or so it seems from the amount of time he spends on the phone shouting people down in typical Holmsian fashion. Lestrade has moved an entire server's worth of equipment into Mycroft's parlor, and there are fifteen policemen wandering about trying to look busy, though John can follow their conversation well enough to understand they're completely at a loss. John's called Sherlock over forty times, left shouted messages and pleading messages, and calls him everything he can think of and begs him to answer his mobile _answer it, please answer you fucking wanker._

John's a good lad, trained to be since birth. His mum had walloped his backside, and university had walloped his brain, and Afghanistan had walloped everything else. So John waits as Sherlock has instructed, _Don't follow, you would be a liability,_ waits as Lestrade flaps about and Mycroft stares at everything with his brow furled with worry, and understands Sherlock on a fundamental level with sudden, viscous clarity. 

John's a good lad, and he waits until the TV says _We interrupt your scheduled programming to bring you this news report. There's been a massive explosion in King’s Road, Richmond, South West London_ \-- and then he doesn't listen anymore, and listens to Mycroft shout his name behind him and he's got no idea where the bloody hell he's going only that he can't sit there even one moment longer, doing _nothing._

It takes over an hour and an exorbitant taxi fare before he finds the homeless woman Sherlock had spoken to during the dragon pin case. Her name is Sandra, and she's missing five teeth in her head, and she says, "Anything for Sherlock's gentleman." 

"Right, I'm not Sherlock's 'gentleman'," John says, and adds, "That isn't the _point_. He's on a case and something’s gone wrong. Please, do you know anything?" 

Sandra looks at him out of a dirty face, shrewd, and says, "It'll cost ya." 

"Anything." 

"It'll cost ya prettily." 

"Dammit woman, please!" 

"He won't like it," she says, and sniffs, and hands him a tiny note folded in fourths. 

Sherlock's handwriting is scrawled messy over it. 

. 

Sherlock watches the explosion gut half a city street, send panicked children scattering into the street; the building she'd been trapped in was student housing. He finds himself somehow removed from the wanton destruction of it, though he can better imagine now how John must feel, watching Sherlock blast shapes into their wall. 

Had felt. Had been likely to feel. Doesn't matter really; at its best it's still just a sad excuse for intellectual exercise. John had been put-upon, harassed but ultimately unmoved by Sherlock's display of boredom. Here Sherlock finds he is quickly sinking into a chasm of rage he hadn't known he was capable of possessing. Anger never lasts long in his system, gets assimilated and dissipates as his mind accommodates and moves on. This is different, this ragged band of violence that stretches under his skin, waiting to snap. 

The phone rings; Sherlock puts it on speaker with one hand, the other clenched in a fist. 

_"This won't be any fun if you don't at least_ try _to keep up,"_ Moriarty goads, his voice pitched to something that could pass for normal. Sherlock glares at the phone. "Let's exchange our circumstances and see how well you manage." 

_"Oh oh oh now,"_ Moriarty tuts. _"You wanted to change the rules, dearest. It's much too late to go back on your word."_

"You did," Sherlock retorts. 

_"I did, I did. Unfortunately you're not in a position to do the same. You'll have to get the upper hand first, which... isn't looking very likely."_

There's a pause where Sherlock reconsiders the eighteen ways he's thought of to kill Moriarty in the past hour. When Moriarty speaks again his voice is low, enticing and intimate. _"It doesn't have to be this way, Sherlock. There are better ways we could pass the time together. The things we could do- we would change this world, twist it, make it our own. Everything you've ever wanted. You'd never be_ bored _again."_

Sherlock stares at the phone. The various superficial injuries from his last encounter with Moriarty have by and large seemed to worsen in the intervening time; he's shivering with cold in the way he always does when he's gone this long without food, and the few hours he's slept in the last four days have only served to remind his body that he needs more of it occasionally. No, it doesn't have to be like this. More to the point, he doesn't want it to be. 

"I don't need you to do that," he replies, then hangs up. 

Less than a minute later his other phone is ringing -- the one he lifted on the way here, the one that only a few scattered homeless people have the number for, none of whom own a mobile with which to call it. 

He sighs. He had expected John would at least wait out the day. Then again he'd also expected not to fail so completely. "John," he answers. 

_"Where the bloody hell are you, you ignorant self-centered--"_

"Are you hurt?" Sherlock interrupts. He's not worried about Moriarty hearing him, or tracing the call; there would be no _fun_ if he couldn't guess what Sherlock was doing. 

_"That's not an answer, Sherlock."_

"Why are you calling me?" he replies, just to be petty. He knows perfectly what John's expression is like from the choked off hiss of breath that travels through the phone. 

_"Sherlock, when I find you I'm going to kick your fucking arse, you know that right?"_

"Looking forward to it; you might not want to curse like that in front of that particular Marks  & Spencers though. A lot of families, they won't appreciate the language." 

_"Give me. An address."_

Sherlock sighs again, then is immediately annoyed with himself. He contemplates which is better -- to be a singular failure, or a dead success. 

"I’m by Pr--" There's a brittle crack, and a kind of sharp sting he's never felt in his neck before, and then everything is dark. 

. 

There’s no dial tone – the line is just cut off, right mid-word, and John doesn’t even care that strolling mums with prams are hustling away quickly; damn Marks & Spencers, damn strolling mums and _damn_ Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock had said not so long ago that his brain was like a hard drive – John is convinced that the entirety of Sherlock’s common sense has been deemed irrelevant and swept out with the solar system.

His hands are shaking when he dials the phone. 

_“John really, you’re getting to be as bad as Sherlock, we had no idea wh—”_

“Mycroft, he said ‘I'm by ‘Pr’, and then he got cut off.” 

_“Say again?”_

“‘Pr’, prruh, pee-are,” John snaps, impatient, and hails a cab. “He carries two phones, one for daily use, one for the strictest of emergencies, and I got the number for the emergency phone – well, never mind where I got it. I need you to put Lestrade on the phone.” 

_“John—”_

“ _Damn you Mycroft!_ ” John shouts, making the cabbie startle but there isn’t time _there isn’t time_ , “put Lestrade on the phone!” 

There’s a shuffle, voices muffled, and then, _“Doctor Watson? We didn’t know where you’d gone, one second you were—”_

“Never mind that now. Lestrade, I need you to put a trace on a phone number, used within the last three minutes – 07544680989 – it’s Sherlock, something’s happened and we need to be there right _now._ ” 

Lestrade, bless him, doesn’t argue. 

. 

Sherlock wakes groggily, a messy, unhinged consciousness that leaves his insides feeling like a used bin. He comes to realize he's tied to a chair, zip ties piled on his arms and legs. It's almost flattering. 

He's on the top floor of a four -- no, five –floor building, looking out of a window on the west side, near—

"Lambeth, dearest," Moriarty says, behind and to the left, and there's something dreadfully wrong that he hadn't known that already. 

"Oh, don't fret Sherlock -- you are under quite the influence, after all. And the blow to the head you took when you fell probably isn't helping either." 

Sherlock stares out the dingy window to the street below; he doesn't know how much time has passed. _He should know how much time has passed._ "Be a little difficult to solve your puzzles this way." 

Moriarty steps forward, beady eyes alight. He leans over Sherlock, whispers in his ear while Sherlock resolutely refuses to show the slightest indication of discomfort. "Don't worry darling, I've got it all covered." He pulls a mobile from his pocket -- Sherlock's mobile _dammit_. "Only a little longer now. Big things are happening tonight. After--" he makes a show of checking his watch, his Montblanc, of which Sherlock is fairly certain there is only one in the world, "--eleven twenty we'll be home free. Of course, you may not have a home to go _to._ " 

Sherlock stares at him with utter hatred, unmitigated or perhaps enhanced by the drugs gushing through his system. "Planning to lord Baker Street over my head again?" 

Moriarty looks at him in mock concern. "My, you _are_ in a bad way. I would never do something so dreadfully predictable. But you... today you will." 

There's a shuffle and the door on Sherlock's right opens to let in-- 

He stares. 

"You certainly have an affinity for snipers, James," Sherlock bites out. 

Moriarty smiles in an attempt at self-deprecation that fails entirely. "Everyone said you'd crack sooner or later, Sherlock." The sniper sets up at one of the adjacent windows, silent and exacting. 

"No one would buy this; they all know you're involved." He almost stumbles over the words as for once his mouth can't keep up with his brain. 

"They know you've threatened to harm, let's see, a doctor, two paramedics, half the Yard, your brother's assistant, and a nurse. Then this morning you ran off without telling anyone where you were going or what you planned to do." Moriarty grins. "And in four hours you're going to kill a man who bears an unfortunate resemblance to yours truly." A light flashes behind Sherlock and Moriarty looks positively gleeful at whatever information is shared. "The main event is starting!" He twitters, pressing the call button on Sherlock's mobile. They both watch it dial John's number, see John pick up after half a ring. 

Sherlock can't hear what John is saying, but he's not yet so far gone to not know anyway. 

"Doctor Watson, I have a proposition for you," Moriarty declares, as though he's doing John some kind of favor. "Our friend Sherlock is somewhat... incapacitated. See if you can't help him warn the man who has four hours to live that it might be a good idea to take a different route home today." He looks at Sherlock as he speaks into the phone. "You get five minutes every half an hour." 

An assistant steps in to take the phone and hold it to Sherlock's ear as Moriarty moves back, whispers in Sherlock's other ear. "And then I'll kill John Watson too." He's out the door with a silent, slick stride that exposes his true nature better than all the outlandish mannerisms. 

It could be the drugs, or the injuries, or the culmination of several days of nearly dying, but Sherlock's voice is unusually hoarse. _"John."_

. 

"Sherlock!" John bellows down the line, so angry he makes the entirety of the Yard present in Mycroft's dining room jump. Lestrade none-too-nicely rips the phone from his ear, plugs it in to the army of laptops scattered across the table and flips it to speaker phone, and for the first time John thinks this barrel of monkeys might actually be professional. _Maybe._ "Sherlock, are you hurt?" 

_"John--"_

"Are you hurt!" 

_"We've had this conversation once before, and I find this role-reversal somewhat irritating."_

John can hear it in his voice, groggy and woozy and not altogether lucid, and he clutches the table tightly. "Where are you?" 

_"You know as well as I that is against the rules."_

Lestrade's eyes widen across the table, and John watches Mycroft go pale out of the corner of his eye. John himself feels frozen, as if he's been dipped into liquid nitrogen. "I suppose if you're playing hide and seek, it might be against the rules, yes, though you and I are too old for children's games." 

_"I never did play well with others."_

Sherlock laughs, high and nothing like amusement. _"I do pick good company, don't I. Not nearly as clever as me, no, but clever enough, aren't you?"_

"I get by," John says. He can't help the way his voice softens, the way he would talk to a frightened child or woman at his surgery. "Is there a bomb?" 

_"No,"_ Sherlock says -- John hopes that no one else can hear the notes of controlled fear in Sherlock's voice, but when he looks up Lestrade has shut his eyes tight, and Anderson's lips are white. _"No, John, no bomb."_

"What does he want?" 

_"I'm going to kill a man who looks like our King Moriarty."_

The meaty sound of fist hitting flesh, a choked off grunt, and when Sherlock comes back his voice sounds wet, garbled like he's just been punched in the mouth. _"He's going to meet his end in four hours -- it's your job to make sure he takes a different route home today. Not much good that it'll do, will it?"_ Sherlock adds away from the phone, as if he's speaking to someone else in the room, and the sound is back, that awful sound of punching and hitting. 

After a moment, and a scuffle on the phone, Moriarty says, _"He'll call you again in twenty five minutes puppy!"_ and hangs up. 

. 

"Well I certainly hope you've planned out the next one better than that," Moriarty says, while Sherlock attempts to force his lungs to inflate. The breath he drags in is awkward and painful. There are too many angles inside his chest, sharp edges that shouldn't exist. More painful is the fact that he's letting his thoughts get away from him, that there's nothing he can do to push back against the ebb of distraction lapping into his consciousness. 

"Been far too busy deciding exactly how John and I are going to kill you," Sherlock retorts, though it hurts to say it. It hurts worse when one of the guards punches him in the jaw. 

Moriarty stares at him, glares, and Sherlock has to wonder what it is he sees; it certainly isn't the world's only consulting detective. Even Anderson has never looked at him that way, and after that case in October of last year he'd certainly have the right to. In that moment Sherlock sees - doesn't deduce, doesn't infer, actually sees -- in Moriarty's face that one death won't be enough; one hundred wouldn't quench that violence. He'd delight in his own death if it was bloody enough. 

But the things that ignite Moriarty's rage are entirely unpredictable, and right now there's very little Sherlock can do to manage it. "We're both going to die, Sherlock Holmes. The only question is how much pain you're going to be in when you go." He bares his teeth like a diseased animal. "I'll _ruin you._ You and your _pet,_ your _stupid fucking pet._ " 

He snatches the mobile from one of the guards and calls John back, puts it on speakerphone, waits for John to answer but doesn't let him get a word in edgewise. Flecks of spit hit the display as he snarls. "You think I won't kill you both? You think I won't kill you first, John Watson, just to make him suffer? Cut you open and fuck you 'til you bleed, so he can see what a pathetic excuse you make for a distraction, a toy." He pulls back, as though he suddenly wants to salvage that shredded illusion of control. "You'll fail, just like you always fail, like you failed to save your sister from your father, or her bottles, like you got engaged and then failed to get married, like you failed to save all those men, and women, and children. You'll fail, and you'll die, and Sherlock Holmes will be _mine_." 

He hurls the mobile into the wall, where it splinters into pieces. No one moves. "Get him another phone," Moriarty orders, another man once again, this one impervious and composed. He looks back at Sherlock. "Solve your fucking puzzle. I'll be taking over your brother's government." 

Then he's gone. 

But Sherlock has already solved his puzzle, narrowed down the possibilities to a manageable number while Moriarty was screaming invectives down the line. What he doesn't know is how he's going to get John to do the same when he can't even tell him where he is. 

His thoughts are interrupted when someone sticks him again. He spits his own blood in their face; it doesn't prove anything, but it seems like the thing to do. 

. 

There's a beat, two, long enough for Moriarty's voice to stop ringing through the room, before the rage becomes so overwhelming that John gets chills, frozen from his head to his feet. His mind is a rush of sound, nauseating and swirling like the worst vertigo ever, sticking like cloying mud to the insides of his head. 

_It's cold, bloody indecent really and John's got no idea why Sherlock doesn't just fix the damned floor heater. It isn't as if he can't -- John's known Sherlock long enough now to know Sherlock can do anything, really, except of course identify any large body in the solar system -- but that he doesn't want to. Mrs. Hudson was going to bring in old Mr. Charles to get it fixed in the morning, and if John didn't know any better he'd say Sherlock was giving the old man a chance to earn some wages._

He remembers Sherlock grunting at him as if he can't be arsed to speak when he's that curled up and comfortable, and mentioning the left-over risotto he'd made the night before, and thinking about Sarah, beautiful Sarah with the explosion of freckles over her nose she tried to hide with make-up. The bite of the cold air outside of Baker Street wasn't as bad as he thought, but he pulls up his collar anyway. 

He remembers a sharp pinch in his thigh, and being dragged into a limousine, and being kissed on the mouth, hungry and wet and horrible, horrible because the man's mouth tastes like acid, or maybe that's his mouth because he gags and gags and the man laughs and taps his cheek playfully and John can't bear _it he just can't._

When he wakes up, two hours later, there's a bomb strapped to his body and a man's voice laughing in his ear, and John thinks of nothing but Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. 

"Doctor Watson. Doctor Watson. _John_." 

"What?" John snaps, and scrubs his shaking hands down his trousers and breathes through the anger until it's sitting in his chest like fire. 

"John," Mycroft says again, and John can see the same fury in his eyes, the same rage, but his is fueling his Holmsian mind. "My brother was speaking in codes before." 

"Yes he was. Something I had to teach him, in fact. You know, for being so smart your brother can be somewhat dense sometimes," John says, even as Lestrade brings up the recorded conversation again on the computer. 

Listening to it the second time is even worse than the first. 

"When he says 'good company'. Good company, the Goode Company murder he was interested in before we got involved with Moriarty. A woman, mid-thirties, murdered by a long-range weapon." 

"Snipers," Lestrade says after a beat, and the tension, if possible, ratchets up in the room. "Sherlock said in the initial interview after the pool bombing that Moriarty had snipers trained on you both, anywhere from five to ten." 

"If there are snipers he's up high somewhere. A flat?" 

"Or an office building." 

"Yes, but there are hundreds of tower blocks here in London," Anderson says from behind them. "That kind of search would take weeks, and we don't have the time _or_ the resources." 

"What about 'King Moriarty'?" Mycroft says, almost, _almost_ indulgent, and John can tell he's got a clue, and hates him for not just coming out with it. 

"The bombing took place on King's Road," John says, and turns to Lestrade. "Who's over there now?" 

"Delany and the bomb squad," Lestrade says, then stops. "You think there's something there. Something Moriarty left on purpose." 

"It wouldn't be the first time," John says. 

. 

Sherlock honestly has no idea how much time is left. They could be out of time, he could be much too late. It's evening, but it's been that way the last few times he's been roused back into consciousness. It's possible the guards may have got a little too enthusiastic swapping between jabs in his arm and clips to his jaw. 

There's a voice in his head that doesn't belong to him, that belongs to John, except it's not his head, he doesn't get to tick off the box marked actively psychotic, at least not yet, and in any case this voice can't be his own doing because he's never heard John sound like this, and he wouldn't be able to conceive of it if he'd tried. 

Now John is yelling. Likely because Sherlock hasn't been answering his rather frantic queries. He looks towards the mobile and reminds himself to listen to the words, not just the tone. 

_"Just tell me what's going on."_

Sherlock's first response is absurd; he fights a smile. "Lunacy, John." It's a blatant gift, but he's beyond caring. His single biggest annoyance at the moment is fast becoming the fact that he's being forced to stay awake. There's a small part of his mind that devolves into an outright conniption at Sherlock's surrender to the physical, but it's drowned out by the clamoring of soporific sensation. 

John's still talking, but Sherlock can't really focus on him. "Do you remember what you told me last night, John? About forgiveness?" He can feel consciousness slipping away from him the way it does down an hourglass. 

_"I said a lot of things last night and I really don't remember most of them."_

"I hope you remember that,” Sherlock says, then passes out. 

The next thing he's aware of is John, John's face, right in front of him, _John is in front of him._ He almost flinches out of his chair, surprised and physically unprepared for the onslaught of questions his own brain -- sluggish though it is -- begins stockpiling. 

"Answers later, right now we need to leave," John says, though Sherlock has yet to say a word. He's tight-lipped and utterly focused; Sherlock absently estimates how many bodies they'll pass on the way out. 

"Our mutual friend is quite fond of underestimating you," he comments. 

John is busy lugging Sherlock to his feet, which is the only reason he knows he's not still tied up. "'Fond' is not the word I would use to describe his feelings towards me." 

"Fair enough." He would shrug if he could be bothered. "How?" Sherlock asks, very nearly pleading. He can't use most of his senses right now, can barely get it together enough to walk; if he doesn't give his brain something he's going to go utterly mad. John is dragging Sherlock through the door, past the bodies of two guards, to a dilapidated hallway and a lift that looks like a museum relic from World War I. There's yelling from a distance, occasional shots and all the accumulated noise that signals what must be a complete catastrophe going on downstairs. "Apparently two dozen normal brains can get close enough to one giant Sherlock-sized one to solve the case." 

Sherlock grunts and John amends, "Especially when one of those brains belongs to Mycroft." 

"Moriarty?" 

"Mycroft's got it covered; I doubt he's still in the country. Apparently your brother doesn't take well to potential usurpers." 

"Never did." Sherlock huffs with no small degree of derision. There are even odds on whether they're going to make it to the end of the hall. 

John laughs, a little hysterically. "You're ridiculous." 

"What?" Sherlock stumbles and John has to scramble to right them both; Sherlock knows the added strain to his damaged neck and shoulders must be torturous. 

"You are such a huge drama queen," John replies, exasperated but mostly amused. He could be talking to Sherlock across the breakfast table, or next to him in a taxi. He sounds so at ease -- it's only his eyes that give him away. 

Then there are several distant bangs, and a thunderous rumble that sends smoke from behind the lift doors and flecks from the ceiling raining down on them. They stare for a moment, then John nods decisively. "Stairs it is." 

Sherlock estimates he has four steps before he collapses. As a testament to his condition he's even got that wrong -- he only makes it three. His last thought is that it's just as well; they weren't likely to make it out of the building alive anyway. 

. 

It is, John thinks, a curious role reversal. 

It seems like ages ago, _decades_ that he was in St. Barts with his head wound, though of course it has only been a day. Now it is Sherlock who is lying in bed, unconscious and looking decidedly worse for wear -- bruised, face swollen and black and blue, arm restrained to keep the remnants of the neurotoxin from traveling any faster through his blood stream. His curls lay damp along his temples from fever, and he's trembling, the jerks of his muscles as involuntary as they must be painful. He'd been barely cognizant on those fleeting phone calls, and near the end, the second to last call, he hadn't been lucid at all, mumbling about pancakes their father used to make. That had scared Mycroft so badly he'd been shaking when he snatched the phone from John and hissed obscenities so vile only John, a military man, could properly appreciate. 

There'd barely been a second, a _second_ , the entirety of Scotland Yard already running into one of the buildings they suspected Sherlock to be in, but Mycroft had said, "My father died making us pancakes.” 

John decides then in that moment that when he sees Moriarty again he will not give the man a chance to talk, to open his bloody fucking _mouth_. The next time John sees Moriarty, there will be a bullet hole between his beady little eyes and John will have put it there, and he won't be sorry, not one whit. 

"John," says a voice from the pillow, rusty with disuse and yelling and pain, and John plasters on a smile from somewhere, leans up a bit. 

"Sherlock. How are you feeling?" 

Sherlock stares at him from a moment -- _pupil reaction good, involuntary muscle spasms have already decreased, blood pressure returning to something like normal_ \-- and says, "This is a remarkable turn of events." 

"What, that you're laid up in hospital for once? I find it a breath of fresh air, myself," John says, but clasps Sherlock's wrist in his hand, fingers along his pulse point, and brushes some of those damp curls stuck to Sherlock's face away as he counts beats. "How are you feeling?" 

"That is a patently ridiculous question." 

“That’s me, Doctor Ridiculous,” John says. Sherlock thinks on this, and John takes a moment to do a quick check-over no doubt Sherlock's doctor will perform again. He thumbs gently at Sherlock’s eyelids to take a look at his pupil reaction, at an eyebrow until it twitches unconsciously. The bruise spanning the entirety of the left side of his face is terrifying to behold, and will undoubtedly turn every color of the rainbow before it’s healed, but there doesn’t appear to be any nerve damage that John can see, though of course it will require a multitude of tests he will insist very loudly on. “Aren’t you going to ask? I know you’re curious.” 

“Curious?” Sherlock asks, tilts his head a bit. “I am, you’ll find, always curious.” 

“No, I mean, aren’t you going to ask about how we got you out?” 

“That would somehow imply I don’t already know.” 

It’s exactly what John expects, and despite himself, he feels relief sweep up into his heart that he tries desperately not to show. “Oh, do you now?” he asks, eyebrow arched. 

“Of course. Judging from the content of the mud splattered on the hem of your jeans I’d wager Moriarty was keeping me near the warehouse district in Lambeth – that refinery oil-water-dirt mix can’t be recreated anywhere else – in an office building, somewhat high up, with a view of the Thames. Not the most creative idea on his part, as Lestrade is an ex-soldier trained in city tactics who undoubtedly got the entirety of the Yard into the building without Moriarty’s men being the wiser. He is, at times, useful. Add that to your own skills of avoiding detection gained from the military and I imagine you had half the building stormed before he knew what was going on. Clinging to your clothing is the ozone-acidic smell of a flash bomb, so that’s how you incapacitated those in the room with me without introducing any more chemicals into my body – you would never have allowed nerve gas. Kind of you. No signs of Moriarty, but that’s because he had a helicopter waiting on the roof as a means of escape.” 

“There is no possible way you’ve deduced he had a helicopter on the roof.” 

Amusement tilts Sherlock’s lips. “None, but we are talking about a proper super-villain. Of course he had a helicopter on the roof.” 

"Don't," John says, closes his eyes for a moment. "It's not funny, Sherlock." 

"Of course it isn't," Sherlock says, shifts in his bed, and John pretends he doesn't see the way the skin around Sherlock's eyes tightens up. "There was something at King's Road. That's how you found me." 

John goes quiet because he doesn't want to talk about it, _he doesn't want to talk about it_ but apparently Sherlock does because he presses, "John? What was at King's Road?" 

"I thought you'd know." 

"John." 

He exhales, stares up at the ceiling, before carefully taking Sherlock's phone out of his pocket, or at least a phone that's identical to Sherlock's, down to the dings and scratches. On the screen there's a link to an mp3 file, and when John plays it, five pips ring out across the room. 

And quite suddenly John remembers just how close he came to losing Sherlock entirely, and he hasn't known him long enough to feel like he's never known anyone better but the feeling lives there, in his guts, and all the desperation and fear and relief gathers up in his chest and John can't quite help leaning over the side of Sherlock's bed and kissing him. 

. 

With the superficial press of lips to his own Sherlock can feel his brain whirl to life, albeit with an unsteady gait. He can tell a couple's entire relationship from the way they kiss, has predicted innumerable divorces, affairs, engagements, issues with sexual identity, pregnancies. It takes about the same amount of conscious consideration as establishing that thing with four wheels and an engine as a car. 

John kisses him, and he has no idea what it means. 

He doesn't move -- he can't lean forward, and he chooses not to pull away. After a long moment of utter stillness John decides for him, excerpts from the dissertation on John Watson's Feelings flickering across his face when he moves back. 

Sherlock stares at him. There are several possible explanations for this turn of events: affirmation of his own life, distraction from pain and fear and humiliation, affirmation of Sherlock's life, sexual interest, romantic interest, both. Without further data he won't know how to respond. 

"Sorry, sorry--" John is mumbling, looking up and around and at anything that is not Sherlock's face. 

"What for?" he asks, genuinely curious. He can feel his arms twitching, an uncomfortable distraction. It makes him think of Moriarty, of his brother, of the inconceivable number of possibilities. It makes him feel out of control; he tries to focus on John instead. 

"It was a stupid -- it was -- you know what, just forget it." 

Sherlock raises his eyebrows at the uncharacteristic display of inconstancy. "That would make you... happy?" 

For a moment there's a look that passes over John's face like he's going to start laughing again. "Yes," he replies simply, though they both know it's not the whole of it. 

Sherlock opens his mouth to say something, find a way to rattle the truth out of John, but there's a knock on the door, an apologetic Lestrade leaning into the room. He looks between them with a vaguely guilty expression. "Sorry to interrupt; we can always come back--" 

"--No, no, now is fine." John says, standing up awkwardly. He nods in Sherlock's direction without actually looking at him, and sidles past Lestrade to leave the room. Sherlock watches him go and tries to puzzle out whether the evidence would support his hypothesis. 

He's leaving the hospital tomorrow. He'll have a plan by then. 

. 

Sherlock is released from hospital at precisely 10:17 a.m. He’s absolutely absorbed in his own crankiness, and, what with all the doctor’s poking and prodding, it’s easy work to get him into the car and back home without realizing it isn’t a taxi and in fact Mycroft’s car. 

By eleven Sherlock is installed quite comfortably in Baker Street, propped up on pillows on his tatty sofa, with a thick blanket stretched out over his legs. “He’s in shock,” John says, tucking in the blanket’s corner, which doesn’t make any sense at all because Sherlock is as well as can be expected after his experience but he isn’t in _shock._ Sherlock, however, offers a small smile, and John looks less on the verge of crumbling, so Mycroft lets it lie. 

Baker Street has quieted, and John has escaped upstairs (Mycroft is 96% sure he’s having a minor breakdown, which is only logical after the events of the past few days), and it’s only the two of them now, doing something they haven’t done in years, something vile and insipid and a bit lovely, for all that -- watching telly. “Do you remember when we were lads, that cartoon we used to watch?” 

“Of course I remember,” Sherlock says. “It’s my life, isn’t it?” 

“A bit of a role reversal though, I’d say. No one would ever mistake you for Jacques Clouseau.” 

Sherlock snorts, shifts down into the pillows a bit, and doesn’t take his eyes off the television. There’s some sort of news on, talking about all the world’s ills, some things Mycroft even knew of days ago. Weeks ago. 

“I remember when you stole mummy’s pearl necklace and left encrypted codes all over the grounds until I found it.” 

“My first polyalphabetic substitution ciphers,” Sherlock says, and smirks. “I had less finesse then.” 

“You were three.” Tiny, enormous eyes so full of intelligence and sarcasm, even then; his cheeks still fat and his hair the long, downy curls of a baby. “And you got two letters wrong.” 

“Oh, two letters!” Sherlock says, offended, and but whatever else he means to say gets cut off at the knees by whatever is on Mycroft’s face. 

“You were clever. I used to give you puzzles to solve, do you remember?” 

“I do,” Sherlock says. “I was so angry when you gave me the rubik’s cube. I solved it in thirty seconds.” 

“You didn’t speak to me for a week that time.” 

“Ten days.” 

“You were seven.” 

Sherlock looks at him. “You’re angry with me.” 

“By the time you were at secondary school I was giving you theory solving equations, things even I barely understood. I couldn’t keep up with your hunger for knowledge, your mind. And then you became a grown man, and you went out to find your own puzzles. But you see, Sherlock, I failed you somehow. Or perhaps more correctly, mummy and father did. We worked your mind, and forgot to instill in you common sense.” 

“Mycroft—” 

“No, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, sitting up, leaning close. “For the first time in many long years I don’t care what you have to say.” He inhales slowly, lets it out. “I can’t claim to understand your motives, nor do I care. What I do know is that you single-handedly cocked this up, in a fashion so spectacular you have even astounded me. You almost got yourself killed, and regardless of what you think, that is not alright. It never has been, more now than ever.” 

“Why is that?” 

“You know why,” Mycroft says, looks to the steps that lead to the bedroom on the second floor. 

There is a long, awkward pause. 

“Well, I’d best be off,” Mycroft says, stands with a creak of his knees, and pats Sherlock on the shoulder on his way out. 

. 

Sherlock spends nine hours on the couch, which is eight hours more than he expected to. He fell asleep at some point, a blank space he has no recognition of consenting to. He startles himself awake meaning to make a coherent answer to someone, looking to his left for a mobile that isn't there. John _is_ speaking near him though; going by the volume he's reaching the end of his conversation with Harry. 

He doesn't see John hang up but he does here the slam of a cutlery drawer, which means Harry is no longer within verbal reach of his frustration. Sherlock contemplates moving but it's easier to just stare in the direction of the kitchen as John walks out. 

"You're awake," he states. Sherlock plays nice and just stares his thoughts at John, who raises the hand not holding his tea defensively. "I know, I know. Obvious." The way John's hands are trembling just slightly is alone enough of a reason to kill Moriarty, no matter the unsubtle threats his brother leaves about the place, couched in fond nostalgia. Let his brother chastise him all he wants; at the end of it all they both know Sherlock will be the one to catch Moriarty. Mycroft has too much _common sense_ to trail him down the rabbit hole. 

"You and Mycroft have fun?" John asks, probably following Sherlock's train of thought from the very obvious frown Sherlock's now wearing. 

Sherlock mutters in the direction of the sofa. "He's been gone for eight and a half hours and the smell from that tacky soap he uses is still polluting the place." 

"He was worried about you," John argues. 

Sherlock grunts. "He's always worried about me -- the way people worry about dangerous animals loose from the zoo." 

"That's not fair," John tries to fight, but he's making a sad attempt to hide his smile. He looks like he's about to laugh, looks like he did right before he kissed Sherlock in a hospital room, the pair of them torn up and bruised. It makes Sherlock smile back hugely, an exaggerated expression that John is blatantly amused by even as it confuses him. 

Suddenly Sherlock feels full of energy, a toy twisted round too tight. His move off the sofa is for all intents and purposes a sideways jump, and he's already aware of which injuries he'll need to compensate for, to the degree that his stride over the coffee table is as smooth as always. 

John is eyeing him, curious but unperturbed, which obviously means he has no idea what Sherlock's about to do. Sherlock is but a scant step away from him, unconsciously leaning down in the way John always has him shifting. "Are you happy?" Sherlock asks, as blunt as possible. 

"What?" John replies, all at once surprised and nervous and now more than a little angry. Sherlock takes the mug out of his hand, his wondrously steady hand, and puts it on the desk. "Are you _un_ -happy?" These are such imprecise terms, they grate on Sherlock even as he employs them, but he is used to adapting his approach to elicit the response he wants, and he's convinced in this case the result will be worth the aggravation. 

Sherlock refuses to let John look away, stares at him while John mentally tries out no less than six different responses and bins them all. "Not... inordinately," John replies, then moves his face in a way that suggests he's poking fun at himself. 

"Then you won't mind if I do this," Sherlock says, and he puts both his hands on either side of John's face and finally kisses him back. 

. 

It is not chaste. 

Of all the ways John has imagined it to be (not that he has -- imagined it, that is) he doesn't expect _this_ \-- pure filth, excitement that burns at the base of his spine, tingles up across his skin in hot and cold waves. He knows, in some part of his brain not yet liquefying, that Sherlock is thinking about this, cataloging John's every reaction, filing it away, just like he knows that he shouldn't find it as hot as he does. He shouldn't _want_ , not this, not so soon. 

"Sherlock, wait," John mutters, fingers fisted in Sherlock's dressing gown. Sherlock answers him by pressing his face into John's neck, biting and nibbling with sharp, sharp little teeth that seem to connect directly to John's belly. Every nip makes him squirm, tight and hot low between his legs. He's hard, and he's so surprised; he'd almost forgotten what it was to want pleasure, the animal need to fuck and the human need to connect. 

What’s even more surprising is that Sherlock is hard, too, right there against John’s belly. The difference in height between them has never been more obvious, and it isn’t something to be hated or loved but a fact, another way they fit together. The way John can’t seem to get enough of that mouth, even though he has to get up on his toes to reach it – the way Sherlock curls low enough for him to give it. 

They let go to breathe, and every single hair on John’s body stands on end. “Sherlock,” he says, clears his throat, closes his eyes. 

“If you’re going to say something dreadfully stupid, please refrain,” Sherlock says, voice wrecked and deep and a shadow of itself. He runs the backs of his fingers, wonderingly, over John’s cheek. “You’re trembling.” 

“I would say so,” John says, huffs a little laugh. He feels strange, off-kilter. He wants to get personal, wants to tug gently at Sherlock’s dressing gown to straighten it, and run his fingers over Sherlock’s mouth, but he’s so worried – so much is at stake. “You could still tell me, if this isn’t what you want. We can go back to being friends, Sherlock.” 

“You think I’ll regret this,” Sherlock says, eyes tracking over John’s face. 

“Yes, I do,” John says, and steps back. 

. 

Sherlock is acutely aware of the diaphanous nature of this thread between them, the heady strength of his arousal still an -- admittedly enthralling -- distraction. He knows how easily it could all fall apart. Only the most subtle shift in his expression shares how deeply he is surprised by John's shrewd perception of the same. He knows how important John has become to him; he occasionally forgets just how important he is to John. He doesn't expect John to stick around because he doesn't expect anyone to stick around, and yet here John is, trying desperately to keep them off an edge so sharp it might tear everything to shreds. 

There's a knock on the door and they simultaneously turn as Sherlock calls for the intruder to enter. They don't move away from each other though, which from Sherlock isn't remotely surprising but from John is wonderfully informative. Lestrade's expression as he steps past the threshold and takes stock of their respective positions seems to indicate he's reaching similar conclusions. "Is this a bad time?" 

"Are we really making you that uncomfortable?" 

"No, not particularly." 

Lestrade's expression remains exactly the same. "I... what?" He directs the question at Sherlock. 

"Even taking into consideration your generally limited intellectual capacity I can't imagine any other reason you'd ask such an inexcusably _moronic_ question." He expects a look of censure from John, but instead receives that strange sort of controlled amusement that has become his default expression as of late. Sherlock acknowledges how convinced John must have been of Sherlock's imminent demise if he's regressed to finding Sherlock's dismissal of civility entertaining. 

Lestrade, on the other hand, looks considerably less pleased. "You're not really in a position to talk right now, Sherlock." 

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "Do you think someone less intelligent could have survived the last few days?" 

Lestrade attempts a severe expression. "Look, even you have to acknowledge you've made a few missteps here." 

When Sherlock answers him he's looking at John. "I don't waste time on regrets." 

If John had moved any other part of his body as fast as he flicks his eyes in Sherlock's direction he would have instantly sprained something. Sherlock calmly stares back, and in his periphery he sees Lestrade glance between the two of them, looking increasingly uncomfortable. 

"There's a first time for everything," John says, quiet but certain. Sherlock feels his forehead crease in annoyance; John is being peculiarly stubborn about this. 

"Today is not that time," Sherlock shoots back. 

"You've been wrong before -- you're not infallible, Sherlock, no matter what you'd like to believe." 

"This is not an _opinion, John_ , it's a statement of fact backed up by solid evidence." 

"Okay!" Lestrade interjects, still casting his attention between the two of them. He looks like he's afraid he's going to have to interrupt a bizarrely styled domestic, which in a way he already is. "I'll just be going then -- but the topic isn't closed, not for either of you. I'll expect you both at the station tomorrow morning, first thing." He raises his hands against Sherlock's yet unspoken arguments, "There's a psychotic terrorist with an extreme vendetta against the both of you; this isn't something you're going to be able to handle on your own." 

John looks like he's privately agreeing with Lestrade but knows better than to say so. He sees the D.I. out as an excuse to beat a hasty retreat from Sherlock, which is to be expected. What is startling is the fact that Sherlock lets him go. 

. 

John doesn’t sleep that night. 

John doesn’t sleep for the next _three_ nights. 

It isn’t that Sherlock is pretending nothing is going on, for that would be beneath him, and a frustration he would never condone – in his own words, he ‘didn’t have time for the trivialities of good society, and why should I bother with them anyway, when good society is for the most part entirely ridiculous and completely without measurable intelligence, as evidenced by the amount of running about they do looking for a suitable mate.’. 

No, Sherlock would never lower himself to pretend nothing is going on, regardless of how much better John would feel. Instead, he’s taken up staring. 

He stares at John, constantly, from wherever in the room he is. John feels his eyes on him all the time – making tea, typing on his laptop, reading the newspaper. At any other time having that relentless attention on him would be a best annoying, at worst uncomfortable. All it is now is overwhelming. John can see everything written on Sherlock’s face – not because Sherlock is obvious, but because John knows him as well as he’s ever known anyone, and just what Sherlock is thinking is as obvious to him as words on a piece of paper. 

Sherlock is staring at him with bedroom eyes, hooded low. They’re swallowing him up with every glance, amused and terribly, terribly searching. John can’t sleep, and neither can he function, not with Sherlock staring at him like a puzzle he’d like to solve in the comfort of his bed, so he does the only thing he knows to do and stages a tactical retreat. 

He doesn’t know anyone he can talk to about this, not really; he can’t imagine what Mycroft would say, nor does he want to find out. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade both are out for similar reasons, because the former would have kittens if she found out her two favorite tenants weren’t already together, and the latter would have kittens for telling him something he never, ever wanted to find out full stop, being a private sort of bloke. 

There’s really only one option. 

She texts him her address, and John lets himself despair about not knowing where his own sister lives until he remembers she hadn’t known he’d left for his second tour in Afghanistan until he was already there. They’ve never been close in that way, not really, but she’s familiar and he thinks that she, more than anyone else, will understand. “Well, aren’t you a fucking sight.” 

Then again, maybe not. 

“Harry,” John answers, already uncomfortable, but kisses her on the cheek anyway because that was just what little brothers do. 

Her flat is tasteful in that way only women could ever achieve, and the exact opposite of his flat with Sherlock, which has altogether more body parts than he is comfortable with. She has tea waiting, and chocolate digestives, little sandwiches even, and John wonders at her ridiculousness, this clear sign of her nervousness. 

“How’s Sarah?” Harry asks, slipping into the kitchen. 

“Alright,” John answers, picking his way around the coffee table to sit at her sofa, and wishes with all his might that Harry hadn’t mentioned Sarah, when he hadn’t so much as thought twice about her since Moriarty had strapped him into a bomb. He wonders if she thought he was just being a careless sort. He hadn’t even called her to tell her he wouldn’t be around for tea. 

“Actually, that’s a lie. I have no idea how Sarah is, because we’ve been broken up for about three days now.” 

The sounds in the kitchen stop, and Harry pokes her head out. “Oh,” she says, after a while. “And it was mutual, then?” 

“Harry, I didn’t come here to talk about Sarah,” John says, and takes an angry sip of his tea. 

“So who did you come to talk about? Not Clara.” 

His sister looks so put off he almost needles her, but then thinks better of it. “No, not Clara,” he says gently. “Can’t I just want to see my sister?” 

“No one just goes to visit their sister, John.” He hates how serious she suddenly sounds, worse still when she asks, “Is it money, then? Do you need some money?” 

“Harry! No, God -- _no_.” 

“I’ve got money if you need it, a bit extra from the divorce – if you’re struggling there’s no shame in asking,” Harry says, and John is touched, despite himself. 

“Harry, no. No money.” 

“Do you need some place to stay?” she asks, suddenly furious. “Has that Sherlock bastard finally done enough to put you off?” 

“Sherlock is – how do you know about Sherlock?” John demands. 

“Oh, difficult not to, isn’t it? Every time I call you he makes some excuse not to put you on the line, and makes terribly rude assumptions about me, and is altogether uncivilized,” Harry snaps, and then freezes when she looks at John. 

John never has been able to hide his feelings from his sister, not since he was little, so he’s expecting it when she leans forward, and takes his hand, and says, “That’s why you’re here. Why you haven’t gone to your mates. You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, haven’t you?” 

She sighs, and rubs her eyes. “Christ, you’re a fucking idiot.” 

"Not exactly what I was looking for," John sends back, falsely cheerful. He sounds twelve again, trying to make her smile from the other side of her bedroom door when he knows she doesn't want him around. 

"Well it's certainly what you need to hear," she snaps back, eyeing him critically. He looks a mess, like he's just got over a bad flu. God only knows what he's been up to - he'll never tell her the whole story, and she gets impossibly annoyed when he attempts to lie to her, so she doesn't even bother asking. "Do you really think he feels the same way?" 

"I don't know." John sighs despondently, left hand moving to rub across his forehead. "I have no idea what he's thinking ninety-eight percent of the time." 

"I didn't ask you what he was thinking, John, I doubt even he can always keep up with his own brain. But feelings are stubborn, they don't change all that fast and they're tough to get rid of even when you're not pathologically averse to dealing with them." 

John looks up from his inspection of her kitchen table. "You're seeing that therapist again, aren't you?" "This isn't about me -- for once," she replies, though not without some bittersweet amusement. He looks so conflicted, and she just can't prevaricate. "John you already know what you're going to do." Her laugh is so light it's more like a particularly musical exhalation. "You never fucking do what I tell you to anyway." 

"So I might as well give in then, is what you're saying?" he asks, though it's not really a question. He shifts in his seat and avoids her eyes. 

"I'm saying be careful," she answers softly. "There's no reason you have to give it all away at once." She glances towards John's phone, her phone, Clara's name a silent imprecation that in her ears still sounds like a scream. 

John snags her hand, so unbearably earnest, and god when she was a teenager that used to drive her nuts. "I'm always careful." 

She moves her free hand to his face. "This--" she says, tapping at a healing scab on his temple, "--says you're lying to me." 

He smiles a little and holds her hand tighter before letting go. "Not like that, you know what I mean. I'm always careful with these kinds of things." 

"Yes, you've bloody had to be," she retorts, old rage flaring back up with the sudden conversational exposure. John just waves it off and Harry keeps her mouth shut only because she knows he genuinely doesn't want her to be angry on his behalf. Instead she stands to refill their cups. "Sherlock fucking Holmes. Really, John?" John can take care of himself, she thinks as she heads to the kitchen. He always does. He leans back in his chair to look up at her. "Mad as a March Hare," he starts. She pauses in her journey to drop a kiss into his hair. "Well perhaps, as this is May..." she recites right back. This time she'll be there when he needs her, she really will. 

. 

It's edging into darkness when he leaves her flat. He can't say that he necessarily feels _better_ , because seeing Harry always comes with its own complicated set of emotions, but for the first time in many long years he feels as if perhaps something has settled between them. For that, at least, he has Sherlock to thank. 

She hadn’t give him any kind of sensible advice when it comes to Sherlock, though, but John thinks that was because she had no idea what to tell him. Her own relationship fell apart, and wouldn't they be a sight for their mother, wouldn't she be _disappointed_ that her two children had turned out so off that they couldn't even handle a relationship within their own gender. 

Catching a taxi this time of night is almost impossible, much less on a Friday, so he takes the tube back to Baker Street. The flat is quiet, lights turned off save the kitchen lamp, and John stands there in the dark and tries not to let his heart beat right out of his chest. He's been to war, he's faced down enemies who wanted to kill him, who _tried_ \-- and still he feels as if he's standing at the edge of the abyss. 

He could go upstairs, back away from that yawning chasm where it was safe, and everything would be as it always was, and nothing would happen to him, good or bad. And very suddenly, John sees the rest of his life, if he takes that road. He'd continue trailing after Sherlock, being his blogger and partner and helping him solve crimes, but this between them would never come to fruition. John would marry a young woman, someone lovely who would support him and help him begin his own practice, and he'd settle down to a normal, quiet life, with two-point-five children and a proper nest egg and a little house somewhere, proper for children and dogs and family. 

Or he could jump. 

Really, there's never been any other choice. 

He watches himself, as if he's having an out-of-body experience, turn to the kitchen, the small hallway beyond. Sees himself open the door and step into the room, sees himself stare at Sherlock, who looks up from where he's reading in his bed, and sees himself sit down at the edge of the bed, run his fingers over Sherlock's bruised jaw, which has gone black and blue and mottled green. 

Sherlock stares at him. "I have, entirely for your benefit, recorded one hundred and twenty nine ways this between you and I could go wrong," he says. "Upon recent introspection I have made note of several facts you must be aware of. I have at times been called heartless, and I forget trivial anniversaries, and I will treat you as I have always treated you, and I will change nothing of myself to suit you better. I am a horrible housekeeper, often forget to pay my bills, never do the shopping, and have been called a jealous and possessive lover in past.” 

It's said so perfectly without emotion that John would almost call it earnest, and he's really gone round the bend because lord help him, he finds it _charming._

John tilts his head. "I have at times been called a cold bastard, and fuck all if I can remember dates -- my past birthday included -- and I will treat you as I've always treated you, and you needn't change because I--" and saying it out loud is a wondrous thing, powerful, and he runs his fingers back over Sherlock's ear, into his hair. "Don't you understand, then? It's want in me, Sherlock, for you." 

Sherlock stops breathing, and John smiles at him. "Sorry it took me so long. We normal people sometimes need a bit to properly digest things and flap about and make a to-do. And have illuminating visits with sisters." 

"No, I -- no, it's alright," Sherlock says, but he hasn't stopped staring, and he sweeps his fingers, wonderingly, over John's cheek. "I dreamt of you last night." 

"Hmm?" John says, and absolutely does not move his face down into Sherlock's touch. 

"That you were here. That I was having you." 

Now it's John's turn to stop breathing, and he hasn't stopped being hard these last few days, not really, and the heat returns three-fold, buries itself deep in his belly. "Sherlock, I've never--" 

"I know," Sherlock says, and he does, of course he does, he knows _everything._ "Though it came close, that one time at university.” 

John doesn't ask how he found out. Wonders if Sherlock read it on his face. "That wasn't like this.” 

“No,” says Sherlock, quietly amused, “That wasn’t like this,” and leans forward to kiss him. 

In the part of John that had thought about how it would be like between them, he’s never envisioned this familiar touch, as if this isn’t the first time at all, as if Sherlock already knew the ins and outs of him. It’s just easy, when the clothes come off and Sherlock swings him up into his lap, eyes creased with a smile when John laughs. It’s easy when Sherlock stretches them out on their sides and investigates him with his hands, then his mouth, then other parts of him, rubbing together sweet and intimate and perfect. It’s easy to let go, to fist his fingers in Sherlock’s hair and bite at his neck and cry out, spilling wet and hot between them, and it’s easy when Sherlock does the same, great shuddering heaves of his hips against John’s. 

Then, they sleep. 

When they do it again in the morning, John goes to his knees and doesn’t think twice about his aching leg. 


End file.
